[1] Lying west of Crenshaw Boulevard in the Mid-City area, it was designated by the city as a Los Angeles Historic Preservation Overlay Zone in 2000 for its significant residential architecture and history.

[6] A petition to the city by Lafayette Square residents in September 1915 urged construction of a level crossing to bring West Boulevard across the Pacific Electric tracks.

Without it, the petitioners said, ""children have to walk two miles to school" and stores refused to make deliveries because of the distance around the blockage.

"[6] Around 1980, the Lafayette Square Association proposed closing entrances to the neighborhood by blocking the ends of the streets to create cul-de-sacs.

According to a Los Angeles Times real-estate section article on the neighborhood, "Most of the properties have period details: Juliet balconies, mahogany staircases and libraries, sitting rooms, stained glass windows, triple crown molding, soaring ceilings—even four-car garages.

"[1] Home ownership shifted "between white-only homeownership during the 1920s through the 1940s to nearly all African American" in the 1950s with court decisions lifting restrictive covenants against black people.

The community became more racially mixed "as more white families, priced out of the Westside and Hancock Park" began returning in the early 1990s.